Saturday, September 15, 2012

REVIEW: Trapped Ashes (2006)

In continuation of Sexual Body Horror Month (yes, it’s a
month-long theme now with Teeth and Rock n' Roll Frankenstein, and now this), I had nothing more interesting to look at and so I chose
Trapped Ashes, an anthology horror film about as scary as having to stand in
line at the post office for a few extra minutes. It’s really pretty damn
boring, and the fact that they had five stories and NONE of them any good just
shows what kind of incompetence we’re dealing with here. So, who’s ready for a
bad movie with five times the “fun”? Not me…

Director: Several big name horror directors like Joe Dante and Sean S. Cunningham, among others...SERIOUSLY WHAT?

The movie kicks off with some introductions to our characters as
they’re taking some Hollywood tour, comprised of a married couple, a
non-married couple, some girl who looks like Wednesday Addams and a Boris
Karloff lookalike. These introductions are all very rushed and mostly could’ve
just been replaced with a white piece of cardboard with “CHARACTER
INTRODUCTIONS” written on it. You don’t really get anything substantial. I do
love how the tour guide played by Henry Gibson talks
about preserving the integrity of Hollywood while acting in Trapped Ashes,
though – that’s a laugh if there ever was one.

Seeing as Henry Gibson has been around since the very first movie ever made, I guess he's entitled to his opinions

They all decide they want to go into this old haunted house that’s
restricted access, so like a good tour guide the skinny old guy just lets them
do it. I mean who cares, right? It’s only
an off-limits part of the tour that could cost him his job! Totally not a big
deal AT ALL. They go inside and unfortunately do not get killed off in the
first few minutes, so we’re pretty much stuck with them.

They do, however, get stuck in this room that, apparently, this crazy
director used to lock his actors in until they were done working for the day
and they couldn’t leave unless he let them – because I’m sure THAT went over
well with the actors, right? And I bet their agents were just thrilled by such
tactful and fair directing manners!

I just love how angry these tourists get when they’re locked in, even
though THEY ALL AGREED to come in in the first place…gee, it’s almost like
tourists are just generally petty, impudent assholes or something. The skinny
old man tour guide tells them to start telling scary stories to one another and
maybe then they’ll get out. The amount of sense being made in this is just
staggering. I almost can’t even take it! So they agree and the first story is
about a girl with boobs that eat people – yes, really.

So now we get to the main reason I’m even doing this movie – this
friggin’ story. Apparently one of the girls, a young actress, got turned down
for one role, yes, one role, and
decided to get breast surgery to see if that would help her get any better
parts. So after just one rejection she’s that messed up over it? Gee. I’d hate
to see what would’ve happened after four or five…seriously, rejections are very
common in any kind of creative field. If you can’t take it, then you’re not cut
out to do it in the first place. Maybe this girl’s talents would have better suited
for something with less chance of heartbreaking failure – like a Starbucks
coffee barista.

So anyway, yeah, she starts having sex with some idiot and this happens
to him:

This is just one of those moments where you can pinpoint this actress's career dying. Just listen to it wither. I mean how desperate do you have to be to take a role like this?

He thinks it’s bug bites for some reason, because yeah, THOSE look like
bug bites! What a genius. I hope he shares a long and prosperous relationship
with this girl and really imparts his wisdo----

"WE'RE BREAKING UP!!!"

Oh. Well OK then.

She goes and tries to find the guy who did it in the first place, but
finds out that he’s dead, and instead is faced with these three characters, who
are never introduced or given any kind of explanation:

OK, that's it, somebody needs to take a belt to whoever green-lighted this image. Whoever it was clearly was not disciplined enough as a child.

They say they’re trying to make humans immortal because, and I’m
quoting verbatim here, “why should people have to die?” If this was any other
movie, perhaps a film of more merit, I would go into detail on how stupid THAT
question is, but for this? Nah. Not worth it…but seriously, they’re trying to
accomplish immortality by implanting fake blood-sucking breasts onto young
women? Hmmm, yup, that IS the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! Congratulations
Trapped Ashes! You win!

I mean really? Do I really have to review the rest of the movie now? I
don’t think I can top this one. It’s just too much! Nothing in the rest of
these stories can possibly beat this for ridiculousness! On another note though, let's see how much fame that girl's fake boobs brought her! Oh man, I bet she got all the big name roles after THAT! I bet she...

Oh. That was only the second movie she ever did and everything since has been TV appearances and shorts that weren't even big roles at all...hrmm...hum...awkward.

So the story pretty much just ends with the realization that she’s screwed
for life and stuck with man-eating boobs, and in the present time she just
covers them up now when she has sex – something that her current boyfriend just
goes along with because he’s a friggin’ idiot, I guess…and here we have the
main problem with the film. All of these stories are just dull as hell because
they center around people in the room in the movie’s present time, so where’s
the danger from that? We know they don’t die or anything, seeing as they’re
obviously still around telling the story, so…where’s the incitement to care?
Mostly these stories just come off as annoyances rather than legitimately scary
or tense. And that’s never the way to go.

So, what, the next story is set in Japan and involves a woman getting
involved with some monk who kills himself and goes to Hell. She then visualizes
herself having sex with him and the movie turns into a weird porno – so,
basically, it turns into a stereotypical Japanese film.

After that she disappears and her husband goes to save her. He has to
go in this cave and put a tiny piece of paper in her mouth. Why do I get the
idea this is just how the monks get their kicks, playing tricks on stupid
tourists? The film then turns into basically a horrible anime styled thing, and
honestly, have you ever seen something so utterly valueless in your entire life?

I...I just...no. Just no.

I guess they make it out OK, if you really gave a shit, but it’s really
frigging hard to do that. This story ends up just being a big pile of nothing
with no redeeming features or even anything entertaining or atmospheric. Snore…

Next story involves the Boris Karloff lookalike when he was young and
looked like something out of a 1920s Depression-era period piece. Apparently in
the past he made friends with some guy named Stanley, and they had a bromance
that bordered on homoerotic quite fancifully until…

It’s OK, Karloff lookalike – he’s just in denial. He’ll come around to
you one day.

Anyway, they play chess and stuff and the girlfriend just hangs all
over Stanley without any regard for politeness or anything – they even make out
right in front of him, because yeah, that’s totally not a dick move or anything.
In polite society it’s just common nature to make out randomly in front of
company you just invited over.

Then Stanley disappears and Karloff lookalike is stuck alone with her
for like a day, in which he turns into a mindless slave and stops doing work
and everything. What a pussy. Eventually she just disappears and he moves on
with his life until years later when he gets a videotape from Stanley telling
him that the girlfriend was a vampire.

And I’m not even kidding – that’s the whole story. No resolution to
anything, no final showdown with the vampire lady, no real action at all. How
do you even do this to a story? Don’t
most writers at least try to come up with something big to end a story? This
literally has nothing to it – I guess the stranglehold of having to have the
main character alive at the end really castrates most horror stories, a fact to
which this movie is a big testament. I mean, I don’t really need some big
Hollywood-esque overblown explosion-fest, but anything would be better than the
amount of non-conflict this story has! Is it even really a proper story with so
little resolution or conflict or tension?

Ugh, forget it; one story left and then I’m finally done with this…

The last story is told from the perspective of an unborn child in her
mother’s womb – I wish I was kidding. Can’t I just end the review now and not go
any further with this one? Well, I wish, but unfortunately this is like a big
car wreck – really hard to stop paying attention to entirely.

So we get the story that the mother ate some bad meat and, when she got
pregnant, ended up with a parasitical worm inside her womb with the baby – not sure
that’s even possible, but hey, why not. Apparently the father runs off with one
of his wife’s friends, because that’s the sign of a good human being, and the
narration informs us that the baby in the womb made friends with the worm.

A few years later, the mother goes crazy and becomes an invalid – I guess
it was just delayed shock. So the girl is sent to live with her father and his
new wife, who is mean to her and gets mad at her, quite reasonably actually,
for hiding food around the house to feed to her wormy friend, who is never
seen. One night the girl sics her worm friend on the stepmother and it goes
inside her vagina, providing us with this lovely image:

Let’s just recap this for a minute – this final story wasn’t even
really about anything but indigestion and bowel movements caused by bad meat. We’re ending this anthology movie on
gaseous stomach pains. Isn’t that such a fitting metaphor?

So it turns out, in a big twist I guess, that they all told their
stories wrong and are either dead or have committed much worse crimes than they
thought. The girl with the maneating boobs actually murdered the boyfriend
character who has appeared to be with them the whole time, the husband and wife
who got trapped in a bad hentai are actually both dead, and the Wednesday
Addams chick actually murdered both her father AND stepmother…it really doesn’t
make much sense, and mostly just comes off like the writer smoked too much bath
salts and just came up with something random. I mean I seriously don’t even get
it. Were they dead the whole time? It’s really not clear at all and I’m not
even angry so much as exasperated at how incompetent this all is. Sheesh…

The movie ends with the old guy, who is really the crazy director who
used to lock people up in the house with no way of escaping (glad Hollywood
does such thorough background checks on their tour guides), giving another
trolley tour, and this time adding in the random, pointless stories from this
film to his anthology. I can only imagine the conversations among the tourists
on this trolley ride:

“Gee, those stories sound like shit.”

“Yeah, seriously. I hope they don’t make a movie out of that bullshit.
That would just be a drag.”

“I know. That would be the worst thing ever.”

“Whoever would do that should just be removed from the gene pool
immediately. He should have his nuts chewed off by an angry gopher in heat.”

“If we agree on nothing else, let us agree on this.”

The pictures in this review are not mine, they are copyright of their original owners.